Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4- a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 25, 1898 
VOL. L.— No. 26. 
No. 846 Broadway, New YorkL 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite eommunications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications wiW not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
Our Jubilee Number, 
T873-J898* 
With the present number is completed the Fiftieth 
Volume of the Forest and Stream. It is a Jubilee 
Number, with added pages of reading and au art supple- 
ment with illustrations. Sketch and story and picture 
speak for themselves. In generous store, variety, interest 
and value, thej'^ testify to an expansion of resources keep- 
ing pace with the years. 
The quarter century of Forest and Stream's publica- 
tion has been a period notable for changes and de- 
velopment of the interests with which it is concerned. 
The transitions have been both of the material features 
of field sports and of popular opinion and practice with 
respect to the rod and the gun. Those years are to be 
accounted momentous and memorable in the develop- 
ment of this peculiar field which have witnessed changes 
so tremendous and far-reaching. Briefly noted some of 
the more important phases of the quarrer century have 
been tliese: 
1. The general diminution of game throughout the 
continent, and its extinction from vast areas where 
formerly it was found in an abundance fancied to be in- 
exhaustible. The buffalo, America's largest and most 
numerous game species, has been obliterated. The elk, 
the antelope, the deer, the mountain sheep, have been 
exterminated from wide regions which a quarter century 
ago were counted desirable hunting grounds. The 
prairie chicken has been SAvept away from entire geo- 
graphical belts. In lesser degree other game has been 
reduced from abundance of supply to scarcity and rarity. 
2. A widely prevailing change of' public sentiment re- 
specting game laws and game protection. Communities 
once fatuously indifferent or hostile to the theory of 
protection now endorse and support it. The question 
no longer is whether the game shall he protected, but 
how best its protection may be assured. We have seen 
one State after another in the East and in the West 
adopt stringent game codes and establish efficient sys- 
tems of public officials charged with the enforcement 
the statutes. This practical recognition of the economic 
value of the fish' and game supply, as something to be 
conserved and wisely administered for the public good, 
is essentially a growth of the quarter century. 
.3. The development of fishculture from its experi- 
mental and tentative beginnings into an established scien- 
tific and practical industry, by which the stock of angling 
waters has been replenished and maintained, and a na- 
tional food supply has been provided to the value of 
millions of dollars. 
4. Theb eginning and development of the private game 
and fish preserve system. Preserves have been known 
in Ameirica from time immemorial, but as a system wide- 
ly adopted for insuring good shooting by individuals and 
associations it belongs to the period under review; and 
the extent to which it has been developed makes it not 
the least important and significant manifestation of the 
quarter century. 
5. The perfection of the breechloading shotgun, the 
magazine sporting rifle, and of all shooting appliances. 
6. The invention and general adoption of machine- 
loaded shells. This is a new age of factory-loaded am- 
munition. 
7. The invention and practical use of nitro powders. 
If you would reckon the time between 1873 and 1895, pic- 
ture the woodcock shooter of the former period with his 
muzzleloading cloud maker, and the gunner of to-day 
with hammerless breech-loader and smokeless powder. 
8. The invention of the artificial flying target and 
trap, and the marvelous development of trap-shooting. 
9. The addition of the camera to the sportsman's 
outfit, that he may secure by the magic of the sunlight 
lasting pictures of camp and field and game. We live in 
an age of progress and invention so rapid and so all 
embracing that we have actually lost the faculty of ap- 
preciating at their true value some of these modern pos- 
sibilities enjoyed by the outer of to-day. How wonderful, 
for instance, as in very truth it is, would have been con- 
sidered in 1873 that triumph of amateur photography 
which has secured for one of our illustrations to-day the 
picture of a live mountain goat in his native wilderness. 
10. The extension of railroad and steamboat lines, and 
traveling facilities affording ready access to fishing 
waters and hunting grounds once so remote and in- 
accessible as to have been barred from all but the favored 
few. 
11. In general, and more notable than all else, the 
increased and increasing popularity of the sports of the 
rod and the gun, and the well nigh universal change of 
public sentiment respecting them. 
It has been the gratifying good fortune of Forest 
and Stream to see the several interests it undertook to 
promote grow steadily in popularity and importance. 
Rational sports with the rod and gun are better appre- 
ciated to-day than they were twenty-five , years ago. They 
hold a much larger place in the year's calendar now than 
then. The development has been not in popularity alone, 
but in dignity as well. That old-time prejudice against 
a fisherman as a vagabond and shiftless fellow has long 
"since been dissipated; who should advance it in these 
days would be pooh-poohed for his foolishness. The 
once prevalent and mistaken notion that to go shooting 
was a simple waste of time has been outgrown, let us 
hope forever. The sound good sense of an annual outing 
is now given prominent recognition, for we are learning 
with a more and more appreciative understanding every 
day that a holiday on the waters or in the woods means 
health and strength, a cheerful spirit, a clear brain, and 
a sound heart to do and dare and work and win. We 
are learning to live as we live, and to get some good out 
of the natural world, which has ready at hand for us 
reward and delight if we will but accept the invitation to 
prove them. This is the doctrine which from the be- 
ginning has been proclaimed in these columns, and not 
only on this first page weekly, but in the several depart- 
ments, where tens of thousands (literally) have in the ex- 
periences there related illustrated, confirmed, and given 
point to the preaching. 
The Forest and Stream was designed in the begin- 
ning to be a grown man's paper, adult, rational, poised, 
contained, dignified. How well in those first years it 
realized and sustained the character is within the recol- 
lection of those readers — and their name is legion — who 
have known the paper from tne start. To be governed 
by the spirit of the early days has been the motive of 
those who have been identified with the conduct in later 
years; theirs has been no other ambition than to 
carry out the purpose laid down by Charles Hallock when 
he wrote in the first number: "The object of this journal 
will be studiously to promote a healthful interest in out- 
door recreation and to cultivate a refined taste for 
natural objects." 
In advocating the interests to which it is devoted, in 
providing a weekly medium for the interchange of ex- 
perience and opinion and sentiment for the .brotherhood 
of the rod and the gun, of the log cabin, the lean-to and 
the shelter-tent, in giving substance and character and 
pooularity to the current literature of field sport, in 
proclaiming in season and "out of season" the doctrines 
which make up the creed of the American sportsman as 
the paper knows that creed, the Forest and Stream 
has been an agency of recognized force. In its columns 
may be read the story of the field sportsmanship of the 
continent for a quarter of a century. 
In another column is reviewed something of the 
changes which have come in the West. Hardly less in 
extent are the transformations which have been 
wrought in the East. On the Atlantic Coast the 
development of seaside resorts with shore hotels and cot- 
tages has converted scores of once favorite and famous 
shooting grounds into the arid desolation of board walks, 
bathing houses and band stands, roller coasters, Ferris 
wheels and merry-go-rounds. Tracts of swamps and 
sunk lands once renowned for their woodcock and snipe 
have been invaded by the dredgers and ditchers, subju- 
gated by ploughshare and cultivator, and converted into 
farms and truck patches. Many a famous cover has 
been robbed of its remoteness and shorn, of its wildness 
and bereft of its game, and to many another still preserv- 
ing its first estate the game no longer conies. 
Of these mutations and diminutions arid deprivations 
has been born the spirit of "save himself who can"; 
and here and tlicre, by individual or associated enterprise, 
lands have been acquired to be preserved for exclusive 
shooting privileges. The preserve system, as has been 
said, did not originate in this quarter century; there were 
high-priced shooting points on the Chesapeake and 
elsewhere in the old days| but i'n the period from 1873 
to the present the rapid decrease of game has given the 
great impulse to the movement which has made the 
game preserve as a system continent wide, and 
has caused to come to pass even while we were fore- 
telling it, such universal adoption of the system that there 
is to-day more of good shooting and fishing in the pre- 
serves than outside of them. 
Of the advertisers who first employed Forest and 
Stream twenty-five years ago, when it was young and 
small and struggling, many may still be found using its 
columns, and paying its advertising bills. Some of the 
best known names of firms dealing in guns, ammunition, 
fishing tackle, boats and canoes and general sporting 
goods began to advertise in Forest and Stream very 
early in its history, and have continued with hardly a 
break to the present time. Through good report and 
evil report, in booms and panics, and through business 
changes, summer and winter alike,' these firms have con- 
tinued to advertise, for no other reajon than that it paid 
them to do so. We need not say that this long connec- 
tion is a matter of genuine p'ride. There are also num- 
bers of firms more recently established whose use of the 
advertising columns of Forest and Stream extends 
over many years. These firms have proved by their deal- 
ings with their customers that they render an honest 
service for the monej^ which they receive, and we are 
glad to commend them to our readers. The character 
of its advertisers has always been a matter of especial 
pride to this paper, which has invariably felt that it 
would rather lose than keep an advertiser concerning 
whose methods or character it was in any doubt. 
That its advertisers continue to use the columns of 
Forest and Stream is not surprising. This is a journal 
of recreation and it is read by persons who are willing 
to pay, and to pay liberally, for whatever may contribute 
to their pleasure. It is, of course, this class that the ^ 
dealers in sporting goods especially desire to reach, and in 
no way can they reach so large a proportion of so high a 
class as through the medium of Forest and Stream. 
We cannot speak of the West and its wild game with- 
out speaking also of the men, the women and the chil- 
dren who lived and moved over the country and among 
the game, and who subsisted on it. 
Twenty-five years ago these people were so distinctive 
a feature of the wild West that they could not be passed 
over. Then they had changed but little from their 
primitive ways. Life had been made easier for them by 
their acciuaintance with the horse, with iron arrow points, 
and to some extent with the gun. It had been made 
harder for them by the introduction of strange new dis- 
eases and of liquor, and by the encroachments of the 
whites on their hunting grounds. Some tribes were ir- 
regularly at war with us. Now and then they suffered 
from such massacres as Dr. Coues tells of on another 
page, for which they made swift reprisals. When friendly 
they were a cheerful, generous, hospitable people; when 
hostile they were terrible in their pertinacity, their craft 
and the unsparingness of their revenge. 
It was the buffalo that gave life to these people. He 
was their food, their clothing, their shelt;er. So long as 
he roamed over the limitless plains, they too might roam, 
sure that their every want would be supplied. But when 
the buffalo disappeared the Indian's wandering days 
were over. 
Visitors to the World's Fair in 1893 will remember 
well the life-sized statuary in staf? of American types. 
Many of our largest game animals were shown in size of 
life. There was a cowboy and there was an Indian — by 
far the most striking of all these wonderfully impressiye 
